Trans-Saharan Migration and the Colonial Gaze:

The Nigerians in Egypt

Terence Walz

An officer in the Colonial Service in Nigeria, Gordon J. Lethem

(1886-1962) was asked in late 1924 to investigate the Nigerian communities living in Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by authorities of a
nervous British colonial regime that feared a combined threat of political Islam and nationalism. Lethem, who was later appointed as Resident
of Bornu province of Nigeria and served with distinction in various parts
of the British empire, was also asked to visit Jeddah to explore the
Nigerian community there, particularly its interest in religious revolutionary thought. His findings were part of a work co-authored by G. J.
F. Tomlinson under the title History of Islamic Propaganda in Nigeria
published in London in 1927. Lethems notes, letters and diaries are
housed in the library of Rhodes House, Oxford, and together with his
published report they provide a detailed description of the small
Nigerian community in Egypt, mostly clustered in Cairo.1
Lethems instructions were issued by William Frederick
Gowers, Lt. Governor of the Northern Provinces of Nigeria, who
advised him thus:
when you reach the Sudan and Egypt, you should endeavor to get into touch with educated Muhammedans of
Nigerian origin or descent, and you should leave no stone
unturned in your endeavor to ascertain what influences
are at work among Nigerians settled in or traveling in
these countries, and the extent to which they have reacted to those influences. 2
In simpler terms, Lethem aimed to investigate the Takarir circles in
Cairo and the Hijaz, educated or not, and the much larger Takarir community scattered in various parts of the Sudan. He was particularly
interested in propaganda emanating from the nationalist quarters in
Cairo and Alexandria, and keen to assess the nature of communication
Alif 26 (2006)

between the infected Nigerians there with their contacts in Nigeria.

He was also mindful to pass any relevant and interesting intelligence
that he might pick up on to his West Africa French counterparts, who
were also dedicated to stomping out any resistance to colonial rule
among their Muslim populations.
Lethem, a Scot, was a great traveler who set out on his mission
to Egypt and the Hijaz by car, following what would have been the pilgrims trail to Khartoum. In these days, such a trip would have been a
great adventure, and apparently he was fond of talking about it,
because it was duly recorded in the short biography of him published
in Scottish Biographies for the year 1938 (after he had been knighted).
Lethem also had a facility with languages, which, with his liberal and
sympathetic spirit [,] kept him in the closest contact with the high and
low among the diverse peoples with and for whom he worked so
devotedly as a friend wrote in the Times of London upon his death on
August 14, 1962. An Arabist, he had mastered the Shuwa dialect of
colloquial Arabic spoken in Bornu, Northern Nigeria. Though he was
presumably acquainted with Hausa and Fulbe, he nonetheless brought
with him an interlocutor named Muhammad al-Amin, a Bornu man,
whom he met when he reached Khartoum.
In Cairo he was introduced to Khalil Effendi who was attached to
the Sudan Agency in a confidential capacity, who also provided him
with information about the community. Thus, he had access to the staff
of the Cairo and Sudan Intelligence Departments, which provided him
with detailed reports on the activities of West Africans in Egypt and the
Sudan. He must also have read earlier reports of the Cairo Intelligence
Department that had been filed by the great Naum Shuqayr, the Syrian
intelligence maestro who had a vast knowledge of the Sudan and West
Africa, often based on interviews with Syrian merchants in the Khan alKhalili, and who kept in touch with travelers, merchants and pilgrims
coming from Khartoum and towns to the west.3
At the time of the trip, the British were especially concerned
with the appeal of Mahdism, which continued to raise its provocative
head, though it was thought to have been stamped out in the Sudan in
the aftermath of the Anglo-Egyptian invasion of 1898. They feared ties
between the restructured remnants of the Mahdists in the Sudan and
the political aspirations of the family of Mallam Hayatu, the millennialist, some descendants of whom were believed to have Egyptian ties.
They also suspected the role that al-Azhar University in Cairo played
in generating both unwanted religious and undesirable nationalist fer-

Alif 26 (2006)

vor in the wake of the 1919 Revolution and the granting of pro-forma
independence to Egypt in 1922.
Thus, Lethem arrived in Cairo with a hearty appetite to meet
both the high and the low, and a set of notions about Nigerians that
helped form his opinion of their lives and futures. This article will portray the Takarir community as Lethem saw it and try to provide background that he may not have known or couldnt see.
Takrur-Takarir-Takarna
Nigerians living in Egypt were usually given the nisba Takruri
(plural Takarir, but more commonly Takarna, Takruriyyin), often corrupted to Dakruri (with plurals Dakarna, Dikarna), a usage also found in
Sudan where large numbers of Nigerians had planted roots in the course
of making the pilgrimage to Mecca. Richard Burton and other western
travelers visiting Arabia in the nineteenth century mention the
Takruris living in Mecca and Medina, among many pilgrims who had
stayed on after fulfilling the pilgrimage obligation. Many thousands
more made their way eastward at the end of the nineteenth century trying to avoid colonial rule under either the British or the French, forming
the core Takarir communities in the Sudan.4 The descendants of those
who settled in Egypt took the easier-sounding nisba al-Dakruri.
Takrur referred to an ancient black African kingdom known
to early medieval Arab geographers. The term was adopted by the
Egyptians since medieval times to identify Muslimized black Africans
from West Africa in general. Al-Maqrizi, for example, speaks of
Madrasa Ibn Rashiq, founded in 1242, as being frequented by
Takruris when passing through Cairo en route to the Hijaz (the
school was actually located in Fustat, the commercial hub of Cairo in
medieval days, though it lay outside its walls). Takruris recorded in
the medieval biographical dictionaries and the pilgrimages of sultans
of Takrur, who passed through Cairo en route to the Hijaz, were
famous in the contemporary annals of Egypt.5
Modern Egyptian connotations of African geography remained
vague, and by the eighteenth century, Takruri/Takarna referred to
all Africans from the kingdom of Darfur to Senegal, with little precision. Scribes at the Sharia courts prior to the nineteenth century occasionally distinguished between the various African nationalities, identifying men or women from Bornu (al-Burnawi, al-Burnawiyya), Dar
Fur (al-Furi, al-Tajuwi), or Wadai (al-Dar Sulayhi or al-Sulayhi) or

Alif 26 (2006)

from specific towns in West Africa such as Katsina (al-Kashinawi, a

well-known nisba).6 But generally most West Africans fell under the
general rubric of al-Takruri. By the end of the nineteenth century that
usage had gradually disappeared, and all black Africans were commonly referred to as al-Sudani (Black) or al-Barbari (Nubian),
sometimes al-Asmar (Light Brown), with the exception of those
from Ethiopia called al-Habashi. For the purposes of this article and
in keeping with the framework of Lethems report, I am restricting the
old usage of Takruri to Nigerians and occasionally to
Wadaians (Chadians).
The Takruris came to Egypt for a variety of reasons. The contacts between Egypt and that huge area of Africa south of the Sahara
but west of the Nile Valley stretched back more than a thousand
years and perhaps several thousand. The spread of Islam in West
Africa, beginning in the ninth century, encouraged relations
between the two regions, and as a result of African Muslims wishing to fulfill the pilgrimage obligation, thousands of West Africans
traveled to Egypt en route to the Hijaz. Important rulers of West
Africa made royal pilgrimages to the East, bringing thousands of
pilgrims with them. Or, West Africans would join the well-organized pilgrimage caravans originating in North Africa. Others were
taken to Egypt as a result of slave raids organized by indigenous
rulers or trading networks and sold in Egyptian slave markets.
Others may have come as traders. As the culture of Islam developed, many Takruris came to Cairo to study at al-Azhar Mosque,
which, in Ottoman times, rose to prominence as the premier educational institution in the country.
The Nigerians in Cairo in 1925
When Lethem reached Cairo in August 1925, his sources located the Nigerian community primarily in two areas: those attached to
the riwak al-barnawiya which he described as the section in alAzhar into which all West Africans, in fact all students hailing from
west of Wadai, are enrolled, and those attending the Surur Agha
Mosque in the Mugharbalin section of the city. According to his enumeration, some 200 Nigerians were living in Egypt, 61 families in
Lower Egypt (including Cairo, where there were 41 families), and the
remainder scattered in a handful of other localitiesAlexandria,
Zagazig, Suez, and Ismailia. 7

Alif 26 (2006)

Lethem was confident about the accuracy of his numbers, but

there is no way to know, without a proper census of the many different black African nationalities that lived in Egypt. He realized that
there were also many former slaves of Nigerian origin or birth in the
country. For example, he admits in the report, I saw one young
woman whose father had been a Bornu man, an ex-slave, who had
freed himself and left an inheritance in land to his daughter. The mother had been an Egyptian. He ran across a Bornu man at the train station. He heard about another two Nigerians who were chemists assistants, and another who was an interpreter in the Customs at Port Said.
They may not all have been countedand what about the fifty
Nigerian women living in the Mugharbalin quarter who were specialists in zar and about whom he writes further on in the report? Were
they included too? 8
At the time, there were probably hundreds if not several thousand Takarir, not all of them from Nigeria, living in Egypt. There
would have been many Darfurians, Chadians, Ghanaians, Senegalese,
and other West Africans. Many would have been freed slaves, who
had remained in Egypt after their emancipation. Many may have put
down roots in Egypt, but others, such as Hausa, who tended to be transitory, may have stayed only a short period of time (of the 80,000 reckoned to live in the Sudan, 25,000 were transitory settlers). From interviews in Cairo fifty years after Lethems visit, it is clear that
Nigeriansmore so than other West Africansintermarried with
Egyptians, took up careers, and put down roots. A number of the ones
I interviewed in Cairo in the early 1970s when this research was being
carried out were proud of the fact that their fathers or grandfathers had
settled in Egypt, pointing out on occasion that they alone among
Takarir had established roots .9
Takruris at al-Azhar
Lethems report claims that two-thirds of the Nigerians in Cairo
were attached to al-Azhar, at least nominally enrolled as students. The
mosque had been a beacon for scholars from the whole of western Africa
for hundreds of years, but particularly since the fifteenth century as
Muslims consolidated their control over a vast array of tribes and clans
and brought about a steadily increasing degree of Arabic literacy and
Islamic learning. The drift of scholars to Cairo was aided by that fact that
Egypt lay on the route to the Hijaz, and scholars could combine a period

Alif 26 (2006)

of study at al-Azhar with the completion of their pilgrimage duty.

Moreover, Egyptian scholarship in the areas of Islamic Maliki law had
grown substantially in popularity from the sixteenth century onward, creating a deepening interest in scholars who taught at the mosque.10
One of the oddities of al-Azhar was that students were housed and
accommodated by nationality or, in the case of Egyptians, by province or
region. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was altogether 44
riwaqs or student lodgesat the mosquethe overwhelming majority of
them reserved for Egyptians. Al-Maqrizi makes an early reference to the
existence of a separate student lodging for Africans, but in the early part
of the eighteenth century, only two riwaqs may be distinguishedone for
students from Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa called al-Jabart, and one for
students from Takrur. The Jabart riwaq was supported by at least a halfdozen waqfs; and it also seemed to have enjoyed a certain cachet, thanks
to the high Egyptian regard for Ethiopians. The Takrur riwaq, prior to its
eighteenth-century renovation, may have been supported by only one, the
waqf of Amir Yashbak bin Mahdi al-Dawadar, originally established in
1458 with other stated beneficiaries but by the beginning of the nineteenth
century its revenues were being distributed to students from Takrur and
Jabart as well as other riwaqs. In general, funding for all the riwaqs was
dependent on wealthy individuals earmarking funds from their waqfs for
the benefit of students.11
A major renovation of the Takrur riwaq beginning in 1753 was
carried out by the Cairo grandee Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda alQazdaghli (d. 1776), the de facto ruler of Egypt and leader of the powerful Qazdaghli house, who also provided a generous waqf to benefit
the students living there. Why was it undertaken at this time? The renovation may be related to the emergence of powerful and stable governments in Muslim West Africa with stronger interest in long distance trade routes. The rise of the Keira sultanate in Darfur, beginning
with the rule of Sulayman Solong (c. 1660-80), spurred the development of regular long-distance trade with Egypt. A long period of peace
and relative prosperity unfolded in Wadai (Chad) in the course of the
eighteenth century. Rulers from the kingdom of Agades in central
Sudan (modern Niger) were known to have made pilgrimages to
Mecca during this century, testifying to their prestige and power.
They, too, passed through Cairo. In the seventeenth century, some of
the popular Cairo scholars at al-Azhar, such as Abd al-Salam Ibrahim
al-Laqani (d.1078/1668), were writing special editions of glosses for
students from Takrur. 12

Alif 26 (2006)

The riwaq al-Takarna that Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda refurbished in 1753 was probably meant to accommodate students from all
of western AfricaDarfur, Wadai (also known as Dar Sulayh and
Borgo), Bornu, other kingdoms of modern northern Nigeria, and states
further west. Under the terms of the waqf, the students were given
daily rations, special foods during the holy days, and mats. In addition
to the allotment provided under the Yashbak bin Mahdi al-Dawadar
endowment, which amounted to 30 loaves of bread per day, Abd alRahmans waqf provided 100 loaves (each loaf to weigh 2 uqiyyas),
a yearly sum for oil, funds for a daily provision of shurba (soup made
with meat and water), and fresh bedding (mifrash). Moreover, the
waqf provided a salary of 720 nisf fidda for the naqib of the riwaq and
1,000 nisf for the cook (in addition to what they already received under
the terms of other waqfs). Finally, it allowed one riyal for each pilgrim, male or female, who returned to Cairo after having completed
the hajj and was staying at al-Azhar.13
Charitable good wishes could never override political realities, and when tensions led to the Darfur invasion of Wadai in
1835, quarreling students at al-Azhar had to be separated. This
probably resulted in the creation of a new riwaq for students from
Dar Sulayh (Wadai), since it appears on Nafis list of riwaqs in
1832. Perhaps ten years earlier, a riwaq for Bornu students had
been established (it is noted in an estate inventory document dated
1824 recording the death of its shaykh.) Thus by Ali Mubaraks
time (1865), there were three lodges for the Takruri students. The
old Riwaq al-Takarna was largely inhabited by students from
Darfur, the Riwaq al-Sulayh by students from Wadai, and the
Riwaq al-Burnawiyya by students from Bornu and points further
west. The latter riwaq was the one Lethem visited when tracking
down Nigerians in Cairo. 14
For a listing of the foreign riwaqs and their student populations
1832-1925, see Appendix 1.
The Quarters: Rooms, a Library, Eating Hall
Most of the riwaks have rooms, Lethem reported, one or
several, assigned to them, in which there is generally a small library of
books belonging to the mosque, and where students may keep their
own books, hold conferences, or small lectures, and even live, sleep
and eat. 15 This description could well have applied to earlier times.
Students tended to sleep in the rooms during the winter and out on the

Alif 26 (2006)

courtyard of the mosque during warmer weather. They met regularly

in the riwaqs to study and take meals. When the lodgings couldnt contain all the students, living quarters were found in the nearby lanes and
alleys. According to Mustafa Bairam, students were given fresh mats
to sleep on every six months and wore woolen cloaks called zabit alsuf and difafi al-masbugha.16
The libraries of the Takruri riwaqs were miniscule. In 1832 the
Darfur riwaq library had 21 books, the Wadai riwaq had 5; the library
of the Bornu riwaq is unlisted; however, the riwaq al-Jabart, which
was better endowed, contained 156, and the riwaq al-Atrak (for
Turkish students) had 5,051. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the various riwaq libraries were centralized.17
Funding
Despite Abd al-Rahman Katkhudas generosity, funding for the
Takruri riwaqs remained problematic. Under Muhammad Ali Pashas
nineteenth century reforms, the state confiscated all pious foundations
supporting al-Azhar, and adjustments in the food rations were made.
For a chart of the dole for the black African riwaqs from 1832-1925,
see Appendix 2. Although the pasha established two new riwaqs for
students from areas of the Sudan that the Egyptians had just conquereda Riwaq al-Sinnariyya for students from the eastern Sudan and
a Riwaq al-Barabira for Nubians from the stretch of the Nile south of
Aswan to northern Sudanthe older African riwaqs saw their daily
rations reduced to 12_ loaves for students from Bornu, 16_ (or, as stipulated in the waqf, 25 loaves and 33 loaves every other day) for
Darfur, and 10 for Wadai. Said Pasha changed the system in 1858,
allowing direct funding by individual endowments, and this somewhat
eased students financial situation, although the problem of corruption
in administering the endowments was never resolved. Lethem notes
strident complaints regarding the funding of the Takruri endowments
during his 1925 visit.
In 1894, a eunuch named Muhammad Surur Agha al-Asmar (d.
1915), who was the chief eunuch in the haramlik of Khadija bint
Muhammad Raghib al-Khazindar and a freed slave of Abbas pasha,
attempted to resolve the difficulties by establishing a waqf benefiting
Bornu and Wadai students. The waqf also funded a small prayer hall
(zawiya), called Surur Agha Mosque in his honor, in the Mugharbalin
quarter. Another former slave endowed the Darfur riwaq somewhat
laterBashir Agha Shukri, a eunuch formerly in the household of Maha

Alif 26 (2006)

Duran Aykanji, wife of al-Hajj Muhammad Ali Pasha (date of waqf:

1925). Another donor of the Darfur riwaq was al-Hajj Tayfur Sami, about
whom nothing is known. The Wadai riwaq also benefited from the
largesse of Bashir Agha Shukri.18 It was thanks to the eunuchs endowments that the Wadai students, while far fewer in number, enjoyed greater
benefits compared to the other Takruris during Lethems visit.
The al-Azhar stipend, however, never sufficed for student needs.
Upper Egyptians were given at least two loaves a day. This may have been
increased to four loaves a day for needy students, which allowed them to
sell the extras to pay for living expenses. But Takruri students were occasionally buoyed by gifts from African rulers. Abdallah al-Kahhal, a
Syrian merchant in Khan al-Khalili who maintained close ties to the sultans of Wadai, was sent LE 100 in 1908 by the sultan of Wadai, half of
which was to be distributed to the students from Wadai at al-Azhar, and
the remaining half to students in the Darfur and Sinnar riwaqs.
Nor were the riwaqs large enough to contain all the students from
Bornu and the Westsome of whom were no longer students at al-Azhar.
One such address was number 5 Khan Abu Taqiyya Street, which was in
the waqf of a lady known as Jamila Hanim. Lethem heard that Jamila
had been a former slave of Mai Ahmadu, the monarch of old Kanem-Bornu
(d. 1808), who left the house for the benefit of Takarna needing lodging in
Cairo. Lethem sent K (Khalil Effendi) to stay in the house. He found a
Fellata from Katagum there who had lived in Cairo for 45 years, as well
as a faki named Muhammad and several men from northern Sudan. When
the newer buildings of al-Azhar were constructed, beginning with the Riwaq
al-Abbasi in 1901, some Takruri students (the Wadai/Chadians) were
moved out of their old lodgings and intermixed with other foreign students.
They seem to have preferred living by themselves, and in more modern
times Chadian students found quarters in al-Qarabiyya Alley, near the
Muayyid Mosque, then on Khurunfish Street and then in Suq al-Siyarif
Alley. It was common for students in the larger riwaqs, such as the Upper
Egyptian lodge, to find lodgings outside the mosque, in the small streets and
alleys around the al-Azhar neighborhood.19
Requirements
Many Takruris had great difficulty with the Arabic language and
often had to spend extra time learning to read and write (this was true
even in more modern times). However, during the eighteenth and most
of the nineteenth century, students were scarcely monitored, and consequently the level of learning was extremely low. If they mastered a

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text, their professors would provide a certificate (ijaza) testifying to

their ability. In 1885, during a period of reform at the mosque, a new
law required that students pass two books on jurisprudence and two
secular courses during the two years they spent studying at the mosque.
In 1896, further laws governing admission to the mosque required students to memorize at least half the Quran and be able to read and write
Arabic. Once admitted, they were required to study theology, religious
ethics, legal studies, origins of the law, commentary and tradition, two
kinds of grammar (nahw and sarf), three kinds of rhetoric, logic, technical terms of tradition, arithmetic, algebra, prosody, and rhyme. The
length of time for their course work was limited to four years. Glosses
(taqarir) and explanatory notes (hawashi) were forbidden.
The degree to which Takruris did or could enroll in the more difficult advanced classes is unclear, since the language requirements alone
would have been burdensome. Most likely some former students earned a
living by tutoring West Africans in Arabic and other subjects, and would
come to the mosque on a certain day to offer lessons. In the 1970s, this
was done by al-Hajj Ibrahim al-Sudani, originally from the Dus Gawadir
quarter of Kano, who spoke Hausa and Fulani as well as Arabic.
Most of the reforms in the early part of the twentieth century
attempted to provide stricter supervision over the students, who
were often left to devise their studies for themselves. Prodded by the
British overlords, authorities prohibited them from taking part in
political demonstrations.
It was Lethems understanding that the full certificate given by alAzhar, called alim (al-shahada al-alimiyya), first introduced in 1872,
was restricted to Egyptians and that others were unable to obtain them,
whatever their qualifications or course of study. Foreign students can
get a certificate testifying to their attendance and studies only. In this
he was mistaken, for it was restricted to Arabic-speakers, and in all likelihood, this reflected the state of the Takruri students knowledge of
Arabic and the Quran. During the early 1920s, al-Azhar required students to have memorized the complete Quran in order to gain entry to
these studies at the mosque.
The reformsand a tightening of travel between countries as a
result of colonial rule in western Africameant that fewer Takruris
traveled to study at al-Azhar in the 1920s. Lethem heard that ten years
prior to his visit (1915), not less than forty [Nigerians] were enrolled
in the riwaq al-Burnawiyya, and this was down from the heyday of the
early 1870s when as many as 65 were enrolled.20

10

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Shaykhs and Students

As evidenced by the Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda waqf, the
riwaqs had three salaried positionsshaykh, naqib, and cook. The
shaykh was responsible for the students and answered to the shaykh alAzhar; the naqib was responsible for maintaining the register of students enrolled in the riwaq (and therefore access to a stipend). By
Lethems time, the head of the Bornu riwaq was receiving a salary of
LE 1 per month. Heyworth-Dunne comments about the poverty of
poorer shaykhs who were forced to earn supplementary income like
studentscopying manuscripts, reciting the Quran, and private tutoringand one can suppose that most of the Takruri shaykhs fell into this
category, providing that they had a fair Arabic hand.21 More likely,
they were earning fees on the side practicing the occult sciences.
Cairo court records I have surveyed mention a shaykh of the
Takruri riwaq as early as 1793 (he was Abd Allah al-Takruri Juma,
and a shaykh of the Bornu riwaq as early as 1824 (Umar
Muhammad al-Burnawi al-Takruri, mentioned earlier). Little personal information is available on either of these men, although the
document on Shaykh Umar gives some hints of a life. He had died
while on a journey back to the city of Bornu, and so the possessions he left behind in Cairo were entrusted in the care of a student
at the riwaq named al-Hajj Muhammad Ahmad al-Burnawi alTakruri al-Urqawi (Arqawi?). They entailed a brown-colored
female slave named Zahra al-Samra and a collection of books that
included a Quran, the Dalail al-Khayrat, Tasnif of Shaykh Khalil
(Maliki law compilation), a Shams al-Maarif al-Kabir al-Nabawi (a
collection of hadith), and a bundle of books on ruhan (spiritual matters). Witnesses to the inventory of his property included two other
students from the riwaq, al-Hajj Muhammad Ahmad and al-Hajj
Ibrahim Sulayman al-Burnawi. The books on ruhan give a clue to the
shaykhs means of livelihood outside the mosque. According to
Nafis 1832 accountthe earliest enumeration of students availablethere were ten Bornu students in the riwaq al-Burnawiyya,
eight years after Shaykh Umars death (see Appendix 1). 22
The shaykh at the time of Lethems visit was Muhammad
Munjali (Mohamman ibn Mongali). He was not one of Lethems
Bornu menthe solid Nigerian types he liked and trusted. But he
spent some time with Mongali and teased out additional information
from sources at the Sudan Agency and the British embassy. Mongali,
who said he was born in 1892, claimed to be a son of the emir of Kano

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11

at the time of the British conquest. He left Kano in 1905, traveled to

Bornu, where he lived for four years, proceeded to Darfur, where he
became friends with Sultan Ali Dinar, and then moved on to Cairo in
1915. He applied for British papers in 1922. About that time he also
became a confidential source for Khalil Effendi in the Sudan Agency,
accepting LE 12 a year for his work. It seems clear the British pressured the al-Azhar authorities to name him shaykh at the riwaq so he
could keep an eye on the residents, and this happened in 1923.23
Lethem described him thus: Negroid features, fine physique,
and good presence, well-dressed and intelligent. For a Takruri in the
east his savoir-faire and standard of education appear not inconsiderable. He also opined that though he was an Egyptian[ized]
Nigerian, he might prove useful in one of the native administrations
being established in northern Nigeria.24
Lethems hopes for Mongali never materialized, but in Cairo he
not only snooped on the Takruri contingent at the mosque, he also
espoused anti-Sad Zaghlul sentiments and was often seen visiting the
British embassy, none of which brought him honor in the eyes of the
politicized Takruri community. He lost the shaykhship ca. 1937 when
a drinking problem was reported by Shaykh Husayn Muhammad, who
succeeded him as shaykh of the riwaq in 1938.25
Mongalis naqib was Umar Muhammad Nawwar, known to the
Sudan Intelligence Department in Khartoum, where Lethem first heard
of him, as the Katagum shaykh of al-Azhar. He had left Katagum
(Bornu) in 1911 with two sons. Though he was a Bornu man,
Lethem thought poorly of Nawwar, gossiping in his Report that the
sons were actually slaves who were sold off to support his travels, and
that he often quarreled with the students and stole their rations.
Nawwar settled in Egypt and married an Egyptian who, according to
an informant many years later, bore him several children. Two of the
sons were accused of being pro-Zaghlul, which in Lethems lexicon
made them enemies of the British empireso bitter were colonial officials about the nationalist movement in Egypt.26
In 1925, the students at the riwaq numbered 17. They included three from the province of Bornu, three from Kano city, two from
Melle, and one each from Maruwa, Ilorin, Gumel, Damagaram,
and Kazaure. The origins of two others were not identifiedincluding a man named Salam Nasr who was not a student at all but managed to get himself on the riwaq rolls to receive the ration. Lethem
thought it was significant that few were from north[west]ern

12

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Nigeria, the seat of the powerful sultanate of Sokoto, which presumably was ripe for religious agitation.
The Maruwa man attracted Lethems attention, but for other
reasons. He was Muhammad Zubair, a Fulani who had gone to Tunis
as a boy and could no longer speak any Nigerian language. Lethem
found him extremely dangerous. His private notes allude to a highplaced patron in Alexandria (where Zubair lived for a while)suspected to be Prince Umar Tusunwho informants said got him registered
at the Bornu riwaq as a student (presumably, to stir up anti-British sentiment). But Zubair had an extra source of income and lived well,
according to Lethem. He is one of the leaders of a small coterie of
Takarir who are fond of talking anti-British sedition and take part of
the political manifestations of the students of al-Azhar. The Sudan
Agency was following himinformation provided by Khalil Effendi,
who also gave him snippets of conversations he had had with
Muhammadand had him classed as an agitator, one who took a
lively and intelligent interest in every political upheaval throughout
the Islamic world. 27
But in interviews in Cairo fifty years later, Muhammad Zubair was
remembered quite differentlya man who had made a home in Cairo and
had led a principled religious life. With an Egyptian woman he fathered
13 children, and was said to have risen to the position of khatib at alAzhar. He had even aspired to become shaykh al-Islam when that position was vacated in Istanbul in the 1920s, and later became an imam at
the Um Ghulam mosque, near Husayn Mosque in Cairo.28
The Zawiya of Surur Agha
The second center of the Nigerian community was the zawiya in
the Mugharbalin section of Cairo named after Surur Agha. It was probably funded from 1894 onward by the waqf of Surur Agha, and when
he visited the mosque, Lethem found six Nigerians there.
He asked for more information about Surur and heard several
stories. He was told that Surur had been a Bornu man of Birni
[Ngazargamu, the capital of Bornu ca. 1450-1808] origin, who had
made money and left the mosque as a pious foundation for the use of
Takarir. He was also told that Surur Agha had been a nubai [in a
note: a non-Arab Muslim] of unknown race, who had had westerners
in his service only, to whom as a class he wished to show his gratitude.
Fifty years later when I asked the son of a Nigerian who came to Cairo

Alif 26 (2006)

13

ca 1910 who he was, I was told that Surur was actually from Maiduguri,
and had been in service in the household of Abbas Pasha, and that
when the mother of Abbas became sick, he prepared a special cure for
her, made from Nigerian wood. She survived and, in gratitude, she gave
money and land which was used to support his waqf. Whatever his origins, neither Lethems informants nor my sources many years later suggested he was a former slavemuch less a eunuchwhich was clear
from the terminology used in the waqf documents.29
The waqf drew its revenues from a property of 80 feddans in the
Damanhur district in the Egyptian Delta and from two houses in Dali
Husayn Alley in Mugharbalin, near the zawiya. Lethems talk with the
Nigerians yielded information that the revenues from the waqf and the
two houses had not been received from the Egyptian administrator of
the waqf for some time. They laid the blame on the naqib of the Bornu
riwaq, Umar Muhammad Nawwar.
Neither Lethems report nor the diary he kept in Cairo mention the zawiya in connection with the Tijaniyya, an odd oversight
since it was then one of the most important Sufi brotherhoods in
West Africa, with adepts in Senegal, Mali, Niger, and northern
Nigeria. In the nineteenth century membership in the order had been
spearheaded by al-Hajj Umar Tal, the Fulbe jihadist who was initiated into the order during his time in Mecca 1828-31 (with a short
stay at al-Azhar, it is believed), and whose long period of teaching
and military campaigning 1840-1860 brought about many converts.
The two houses on Dali Husayn that Surur Agha had given to the
Takruris were certainly being used as the Tijaniyya Cairo headquarters at the time of Lethems visit. According to the head of the
lodge in 1971, Muhammad al-Hafiz Abd al-Latif Salim al-Tijani,
the lodge was founded in 1288/1871 in the quarter of Cairo known
as Judriya. Later it moved to Khushqadam Street, and then to a
variety of addresses, including Dali Husayn Street before settling
back into Dali Husayn Street in 1937, which was still its address in
1971. The connection between the westerners and the Tijaniyya
clearly made the zawiya the Sufi orders center. By the 1920s the
quarter in which it lay, the Mugharbalin, had become a favorite residential areas for Nigerians in Cairo. When I visited the zawiya in
1971, the Friday services were packed, and it had in the recent past
received gifts from well-to-do Nigerians, including the Sardauna of
Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, and the Emir of Kano, who visited it himself during a trip to Cairo. 30

14

Alif 26 (2006)

Other Nigerians
Slavery and Pilgrimage
Outside the Al-Azhar and the Zawiya Surur Agha, Lethems
guides led him to those places and sources in Cairo that colonial officers usually had access tothe streets, the police, the Intelligence
departments and their reports, embassy officialsbut not to Egyptian
society and its private domains, at least not when the nature of the
inquiry concerned the lowly Nigerians. He heard, for example, that
there were also many ex-slaves of Nigerian origin or birthbut he
rarely came in contact with them. Several generations earlier, when
Gustav Nachtigal traveled to Kukawa in 1866, then the capital of the
kingdom of Bornu, he reported that as many as one-third of the slaves
exported north went to Egypt. In 1888, the Cairo Gazette reported
freed slaves coming in from the western desert. During the period
between 1877 (when slavery was officially abolished), and 1889,
about 18,000 slaves had been manumitted by special manumission
bureaux set up in all parts of the country.31
The barest glimpse of the life they made in Cairo is caught in
Sharia court documents, sometimes in the saddest circumstances.
Fatima al-Samra al-Burnawiyya (d. 1871), who had been freed by
Bashir Agha al-Asmara eunuch who had served in the household of
Sitt Shama Nur Qadin, who in turn had served in the household of
Muhammad Ali Pashamarried a student attached to the Riwaq alJabart named Shaykh Muhammad Abdallah Ibrahim. She died in
1871, and the inventory of her estate, valued at only LE 10, was witnessed by two students from the Bornu riwaq. Another of the Shaykhs
wives may have been a Bornu-born ex-slave named Zainab al-Samra
al-Burnawiyya, who also died that year. Zainab had worked in the
household of Usta Saida, a cook in the household of Said Pasha. Her
estate was worth LE 8.32
Before slavery was abolished, Muslim Takarna coming to Cairo
faced uncertainties and, sometimes, unusual fates. Takruri pilgrims
accompanying the great pilgrimage caravan from the Maghreb in 1802
were drafted into the army by the Ottoman governor, Muhammad
Khusraw Pasha, who housed them at the al-Zahiri mosque in
Husayniyya, where some engaged in a fight with Albanian troops and
were killed. At about this time, a court document reveals the story of one
of them, a man named Abdallah Adam al-Takruri al-Dar-Sulayhi, a soldier originally from a village of Fara in Wadai, who found his sister

Alif 26 (2006)

15

Fatuma in the hands of a Cairo slave merchant. He brought her case

before the court, seeking her emancipation on the grounds that she was
Muslim and freeborn. The judge required a second witness and a month
later Abdallah brought another soldier and his sister was freed.33
Nevertheless, throughout the century and into the early part of
the twentieth century, pilgrims from the West continued to flow
through Cairo. Before the British occupation, they would come with
letters of introduction from their rulers, such as the sultan of Baghirmis
relative, Shaykh Ibrahim, who arrived in 1855 bearing a letter for
Ismail Pasha, and was invited to stay as his guest. Sidi Muhammad alShinqiti, an envoy from the sultan of Darfur, arrived in 1857, bearing a
letter for the viceroy of Egypt and news from the west, including the
fact that the traveler Edouard Vogel had been killed in Wadaiinformation that was passed on quickly to the members of the Socit de
gographie de Paris. In the later period, envoys or pilgrims were often
interviewed by Cairo Intelligence Department agents and officers for
news of what was happening in the interior of Africaso scarce was
British information on political events there. Some pilgrims, such as alHajj Isa Hasan al-Kanawi, who arrived in 1893, were interviewed at
al-Azhar where they were lodging with students. He came with letters
from the Grand Sanusi, Muhammad Muhammad Ali al-Sanusi, the
sultan of Bornu Hashim b. Umar al-Kanimi (1885-93), as well as the
sultan of Dar Sila, a dependent kingdom of Wadai. Shuqayr interviewed him in an effort to gather information on the sultans of Sokoto
and the general situation in northern Nigeria.34
A group of pilgrims arriving in 1909 gave Shuqayr a day-by-day
account of the fall of Abeshr, the capital of Wadai, to French forces.
Others kept department agents informed of the state of the caravan
routes north from Wadai to Benghazi, and of news about the Sanusi
Brotherhood, whose influence the European powers feared.35
Making a Living in Cairo
Nigerians found employment as tradesmen, interpreters at
Customs, pharmacist assistants, sellers of sweets, doormen, servants,
messengers, and soldiers, but they also excelled, both in and outside alAzhar, as scholars and practitioners of the occult sciences. The knowledge of those sciencesgeomancy, astrology, divination, alchemy,
magic squares, spiritual magic, and the interpretation of dreamswas
also prized by many Egyptian shaykhs, numerology was held in particular esteem. One Nigerian scholar of falak (astronomy) well appreciat-

16

Alif 26 (2006)

ed in the world of al-Azhar was Muhammad al-Fulani al-Kashinawi (d.

1741) whose knowledge of numerology was unparalleled and whose
work on magic, al-Durr al-manzum wa khulasat al-sirr al-maktum fi
ilm al-talasim wal nujum, was still sold in Cairo bookshops in the
early 1970s. He also wrote a work on divination and magic squares
Bahjat al-afaq wa-idah al-labs wal-ighlaq fi ilm al-huruf walawfa.36 Those best versed, Heyworth-Dunne believed, were
Maghribis, but every village fiki [religious scholar] had some knowledge of them and could provide charms. Even so it is Takruris, not
Maghribis, who are more frequently mentioned in travel accounts in the
nineteenth century. Seetzen, who was in Cairo from 1812-13, came
across one Abdallah from Wadai, who not only read and wrote
Arabic, but also worked words into wood tablets and earned a living as
a practitioner of ilm al-raml (geomancy). Rochfort Scott refers in his
1837 travel book to the celebrated magician of Western Africa, whose
wonderful necromantic power has been mysteriously alluded to by former travelers. It is not surprising to find books on spiritual magic
among the possessions of Takruri shaykhs at al-Azhar.37
Lethem thought poorly of those educated in these skills, exhibiting the usual colonial disdain for traditional sciences. The majority of
these Nigerians follow callings which, where not definitely criminal,
are disreputable or, where honest, humble, he wrote in the main body
of his report. The Takruri has an undoubted reputation in Egypt as a
caster of spells, as a compounder of medicines, aphrodisiacs and poisons, and as a cheap-jack necromancer.38 He drew his conclusions
from the enumeration he made of the professions of Nigerians he knew
about and which is found in Appendix 3. At the top of the list is
charm sellers.
Samuel Zwemer, an American protestant missionary who
served many years in Egypt for the Church Missionary Society of
Arabia, knew Cairo well, especially the neighborhood of al-Azhar
where sellers of amulets and charms abounded, and he too came
into contact with the Takarna. In his Across the World of Islam he
wrote, some of [al-Azhars] professors and many students promote the industry. A favorite among those printed by the thousands
and sent from Cairo to North Africa, Central Africa and the Near
East is The Amulet of the Seven Covenants of Solomon. 39 He
was convinced that charm sellers were representative of Islam and
acted to subvert the rational Christian world shared by European
missionaries and colonial officers. But the belief in charms and

Alif 26 (2006)

17

folk remedies was widespread in Egypt, and for the Takarna it

offered rich opportunities for their special skills.
Some of those individual charm sellers and magicians mentioned in Lethems report and unpublished diary were remembered
fifty years afterwards in conversations I had with a variety of informants. One was al-Hajj Ibrahim Gudiya, whose father was thought to
be from Hadejia, in Kano Province. He was a famous magician and the
stories told about him follow a pattern often heard about magicians. In
his case, he is said to have cured the sultan of Turkey, and as a reward,
was given a valuable gifta white slave woman named Sambuliya.
Their son, Ibrahim, was known in Cairo for his expertise in zar, but he
later gave up the practice.40
Another well-known diviner in the 1920s not mentioned by
Lethem was Kankawi. He was born in Senegal, according to Rustum
al-Halabi, the bookseller and publisher. He forecast from the stars and
put spells on people. A famous falaki (astronomer) in Alexandria was
al-Hajj Jibril, is said to have been 115 years old when he died in 1963;
famous ruhaniswho practiced a variety of occult sciences and had a
knowledge of astrologyincluded al-Hajj Harun Abdallah (d. 1951),
originally from Gusau, halfway between Zaria and Sokoto in northern
Nigeria, and al-Hajj Isa (d. 1967), from Damagaram, near Zinder,
Niger. Adam al-Sudani was actually Adam Muhammad Muhammad
Mai Waiyum Korege, originally from Kano. He was a well-known
ruhani and zar specialist who came to Cairo in 1925.41
Zar and Bori
The development in the nineteenth century of zar among all
classes of society provided a new professional opportunity for
Sudanese and Takarna. The earliest documented reference in Egypt
seems to be in Klunzingers work, published in 1870; Bori, the allied
cult practiced by West Africans, was known in Tunis as early as 1813
and was found in cities all across North Africa, including Cairo. The
practice of this non-Islamic traditional healing practice is particularly
associated with the Hausa of northern Nigeria. Lethem writes of his
time in the Mugharbalin area near the Zawiya Surur Agha:
There are also a number of Nigerian women in the
Mugharbalin quarter, as it was called to me, who seem to
be, or have been harem slaves, and now make a good living as bori, dancers, sorcerers, womens doctors, retail-

18

Alif 26 (2006)

ers of aphrodisiacs, and so on. I was informed there were

about fifty of them in Cairo. One whom I met was a
pleasant and typical Hausa woman of mature age.42
In Alexandria, the zar specialists, who were Sudanese, were called
kudiyat, and there were three famous ones at the beginning of the
twentieth centuryKurubamia was the best known, but also Sitt
Sankara and Sitt Hamruniyya, and they continued to hold their popularity until after World War I. The term godia was used in Turkey to
denote the bori priestesses among the Turks. In Alexandria I was
advised that in fact the nisba al-Takruri was used to distinguish certain artists from Sudanese, who were thought less powerful, less
skilled. This, in turn, suggests that the practitioners were West
Africans. Fifty years later at least one of them was still remembered.
Gadanfara, a lady originally from Kano, was famous for zar. She
died in 1950 and was known in the Mugharbalin as Bakashin.43
The Political Climate of the 1920s
Lethems main purpose in coming to Cairo was to investigate the
sentiments of the Takarir (Nigerian) community and to see how its
members might affect the political leanings of Nigerians back home.
H. R. Palmer, later Lt. Governor of Northern Nigeria, believed
that the Mahdist (i.e. Islamic revivalist) propaganda was seeping
into Nigeria primarily through the Sanusi and Tijani sufi orders. The
authorities were keeping an eye, for one, on the family of Hayatu Said,
the descendant of Usman dan Fodio who had established the caliphate
at Sokoto in the eighteenth century, and who as a Nigerian ruler had
embraced the Mahdist cause in the 1880s. They watched both the son
of Hayatu, Mallam Said, whose Mahdist pretensions they were convinced were being enflamed by Egyptian agents, and Amadu Rufai,
another member of the family, who traveled to Egypt in 1917-18 and
was a student at al-Azhar for four years. Amadu went to Alexandria,
where he joined a small Nigerian circle and was himself immersed in
anti-European circles. Nigerian Intelligence reported that he
received a bag of money from the Libyans before returning to
Nigeria in 1927. They also kept an eye on Alfa Hashim, an influential
mallam (educated person) in Kano who had links to Egypt and Hijaz,
and was responsible for enrolling many into the Tijaniyya order, which
by then the British authorities were watching.44

Alif 26 (2006)

19

Lethem believed that the anti-British sentiment among the

Takarir was due to Egyptian propaganda. For him, this was expressed by
displaying pictures of Saad Zaghlul and King Fuad, talking of possible
collaborations between the French and Turks, and praising the Germans
and Italians. He felt that the popularity of visionary statements, such as
the Wasiyya of Shaikh Ahmad al-Khazzim, that were distributed
among the Takarir by an Indian, was another manifestation of their antiBritish views. He believed their willingness to mention such antiEuropean Muslim leaders as the Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi, Imam
Yahya (of Yemen), Abdel-Karim al-Khattabi (the Moroccan nationalist
hero), and Mustafa Kamal (Ataturk) forebode ill.45
And he cautioned against potential damage that could be done
by the Takarir community in Cairo, small as it was, since collectively
they formed a channel to political agitators in Nigeria. To practically
all the Takarir, even the lowest-class vagabonds, Lethem wrote, the
political ferments in Cairo are a lively interest, for these touch the riffraff and even the half-baked schoolboy youth of the cosmopolitan population of the city. He referred to one Takruri, an Adamawa man who
lived for a while in Tunis but had become wealthy, owned a house and
had means, who encouraged Takarir to join him in seditious activities. Another agitator, he noted, was the son of a hothead from
Katagum who got in trouble in Sudan for slave trading and came to
Cairo with the son . . . He has plans to visit Nigeria [and therefore
should be watched]. 46
A Bornu man, Lethem also observed, had carried letters
between Egypt and Chad from a wealthy patron in Alexandriai.e.
an anti-British agitator. He wrote darkly about a German linguist who
was known to have studied the Bornu language with students from alAzhar, and about a Syrian merchant in Khan al-Khalili who had contacts in Kano and was believed to be financing sedition in Wadai.47
The latter was Mahmud al-Kahhal, the son of Abdallah alKahhal whom Shuqayr knew very well and whom he met regularly to
learn news about Sudan, Darfur, Wadai and Libya via al-Kahhals
extraordinary trade network. Abdallah had contacts with Sanusi for
many years and was highly regarded by Shuqayr for the information
he could provide. He was known to like westerners, and was remembered many years later as a man who gave lodging in his wakala in
Khan al-Khalili to poor Takruri pilgrims, especially if they were trading in goods in which he traded. During the big feasts, if they were in
town, there would be hafla (party) every night, and students from the

20

Alif 26 (2006)

African riwaqs would join them. Abdallah died in 1921 and his son
Mahmud was much more cautious than his father. He withdrew from
his fathers wide African contacts. This saved Lethem from viewing
him suspiciously, though he salaciously noted in his diary that he
gives news of the west to Giptis for money. He also called him a
bab al-gharb, adding in a footnote to Jaghabub, meaning that alKahhal was in constant communication with the Sanusis. Nor did he
much appreciate Mahmuds speaking admiringly of Kamal Mustafa,
Imam Yahya, and other great Muslim leaders.48
One Egyptian shaykh who worried Lethem was [Muhammad]
Mahmud Khattab al-Sibki [al-Subki], whom he called a violent hotgospeller denouncing not only European influence but also modernism
in any form. Al-Subki had a number of Takruri followers, including,
it was said, a Mallam Kiyari of Maiduguri, and was so influential he
was said to have formed his own tariqa.49
Nor was the power of books and publishing overlooked in his
report on nationalist and Islamic propaganda emanating from Cairo.
Missionaries such as Zwemer had noted,
In Cairo, tourists seldom wander to what we call
Pasternoster Row, the booksellers quarters. Here, near
the Azhar University, piled high, you may see huge
parcels of Arabic books addressed to Kordofan,
Timbuktu, Cape Town, Zanzibar, Sierra Leone,
Mombasa, Madagascar. Islam pours out literature and
extends the area of Arabic literates every year . . . In the
Lake Chad region of Africa, many books are imported
from Cairo.50
Zwemer was principally alluding to the firm of Mustafa and Isa alBabi al-Halabi, whose establishment near al-Azhar was well known
to Takruris and other non-Egyptian Muslims. They published many
manuscripts of Maliki works that were sent to central Africa.
Lethem noted in his diary that Mustafa was very rich and interested in politics of Lagos, but then could not help adding, he also
asked for aphrodisiacs.
The firm was established in 1858 by Ahmad al-Babi al-Halabi
(d. 1898). He had studied at al-Azhar, and when he saw that books
were being published in Turkish by the Bulaq press, he decided to
bring out Arabic editions of popular classic textsthe al-Durr al-

Alif 26 (2006)

21

Manthur by al-Suyuti, the Sharh by al-Asqalani, the Musnad by Ibn

Hanbal and many othersbooks that had legs, his grandson Rustum
al-Halabi recalled in an interview in Cairo in 1971. Soon manuscripts
were brought from distant places, including Nigeria and Iran, to be
published, many in first editions. The press was located on alKakiyyin street. Ahmad had two sons, Mustafa and Isa. Mustafa left
the firm in 1918 and established his own company. They were sent to
many parts of Africa to sell their books.51
Lethem had this to say about the brothers in his report: They
appear to be general traders and deal in printed books, and have a
printing press. They appear to have had some sort of connection
and correspondence with Lagos, since the visit to Cairo of the late
Hajj Ali Fahmy of Lagos, who stayed with them . . . They are, however, sufficiently interested in Lagos to inquire of a Nigerian who
recently came to Cairo with letters of introduction to them, news of
Lagos politics and the influence of Muslims in the Government in
Nigeria. But Lethem failed to discover a non-commercial connection between the Halabis and Fahmi or even that they knew him
personally. This seemed to irk him, since the British were convinced that Fahmi had been an agent for the Egyptian nationalists
in Lagos, and was working to turn the coastal Nigerians into
Mahdists or Zaghlulists. 52
Conclusion
Upon his return to Nigeria, Lethem was quite proud of the work
he had done in Egypt in penetrating the Takarir and Surur Agha
Mosque circles. He wrote to Sir Hugh Clifford on 24 July 1925, just
three days after returning from Cairo, that he had discovered letters
were being sent from Egypt to Nigeria, to the chief of the
Ngueguimi: In the present lull in anti-British outbreaks, I managed
to penetrate to the Bornu riwaq in the Azhar and to the small mosque
of Serur Agha, a center of westerners, and to make some friends
among Nigerians who may be useful. He warned about a pasha in
Alexandria who might be a menace, who Lethem privately believed to
be Prince Umar Tusun.
But the momentary lull was transitory. By the end of the 1920s,
Islamic propaganda emanating from Egypt and other countries of
Mohammedan Africa was seen as overwhelming Nigeria. An
assessment by the Nigerian Intelligence Department warned, the

22

Alif 26 (2006)

fanatical mind of the Mohammedan is only too apt to be carried away,

and all ideas of loyalty shattered by a sudden fanatical outburst . . .
brought about by the preachings and dictates of propagandists. The
authors of the assessment also urged that a close watch be kept over
Azhari students in Northern Nigeria, especially two former students,
Alfa Hashim and Amadu Rufai. They believed that the Wafd had
formed a Sudan Association with the assistance of Soudan merchants and students at al-Azhar, who might be used for political and
religious propaganda in this country.53 Lethems optimism proved
ineffective. The colonial era cast its political spin on the nature of cultural and economic contacts between Egypt and Takrur.

Alif 26 (2006)

23

Appendix 1
STUDENTS ENROLLED IN FOREIGN RIWAQS AT AL-AZHAR,
NINETEENTH - EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
Nationality

1850

1872

1902

1925

Turkish
Syrian (inc. Lebanon, Palestine)
Mughariba
Tunisia
Libya
Morocco
Algeria
Jawan (Indonesia, inc. Malaya, China)
Haramayn
Baghdad
Yemen
Kurd
Sulaymania (Afghanistan, Khorasan)
India

11
98
35

59
231
85

180
300
200

4
12

17
5
23
3

2
80
16
5
4

104
264
120
20
51
22
27
7
7
2

Barabira (Nubians)
Sennar
Jabart
Bornu
Sulayh (Sulaik, Dar Sila,
Wadai, Chad)
Darfur (Ardofor)
Baqqara (Sudanese)

9
20
few
10

12
8
15
26

5
5

8
2
3

Total Students

1833

9
5
3

150
40
3
20
15
7
20

37
19
257
65

45
28
6
13

30
21
20
17

6
6

14
12

5
4

9,668

10,403

Sources:
1833: Abd al-Hamid bey Nafi, Dhayl al-Maqrizi, MS in al-Azhar Library,
[#412] Abaza 6702 [Tarikh], dated 1248, 40-45.
1850: Ibrahim Salama, Bibliographie analytique et critique touchant la ques tion de lenseignment en Egypte depuis la periode des mamluks jusqu nos
jours (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1938) 277. Total number: 1,162 including lamplights and servants of the students.

24

Alif 26 (2006)

1872: Edouard V. Dor, Linstruction publique en Egypte (Paris: A. Lacroix,

Verboeckhoven et cie) appendix; the Jabart total includes students from
Sawakin.
1902: Mustafa Bairam, Risalat fi Tarikh al-Azhar (Cairo: Tammadun, 190304) 60; Bayard Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millennium of Muslim Learning
(Washington, DC, Middle East Institute, 1961), 164-65, total foreign students: 645.
1925: Lethem, Report, 52. Lethem believed the Burnawiyya riwaq had as
many as 40 in 1915.
Appendix 2
RATIONS FOR STUDENTS FROM BLACK AFRICA

Burniyyah (Burnawiyya)
Dakarnah (Takrur, Darfur)
Jabartiyya
Sinnariyyah
Barabirah
Dakarna Sulayh (Wadai)

1833

1865

1925

12_
16_
25
40
6
10

12
17
25_
80
5_
8_

12
33 loaves/day
25_ /day
80/day
5_ /day 40 students
8 5/8 loaves/day

In contrast, the students attached to the Riwaq Saaidah received 2 loaves per
student per day; Dodge says that at the beginning of the twentieth century
needy students were given 4 loaves a day, two of which they could sell.
Sources:
1833: Nafi, Dhayl al-Maqrizi, 40-45.
1865: Mubarak, Al-Khitat (New Edition), 4:52-57.
1900: Dodge, 128.
1925: Lethem; Dodge, 202-05. Note: Bread rations were provided on the
basis of one loaf every two days; the chart above is calculated on a daily
ration.

Alif 26 (2006)

25

Appendix 3
OCCUPATIONS OF NIGERIANS IN EGYPT
The Appendix to Lethems report included a name directory of the Nigerians
outside of al-Azharin Cairo (24), Alexandria (8), Zagazig (6), Suez (3), and
Ismailia (2). The occupations listed beside their names in his enumeration
are as follows:
Charm seller (sorcerer)
Beggar
Thief
Messenger
Soldier
Doctor or pharmacy assistant
Murderer
Fortune teller
Sweet seller
Vagrant
Interpreter
Beadseller
Drunkard
Servant
Trader

20
3
3
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1

Source:
Lethem, Report, Appendix C, 37-39.

26

Alif 26 (2006)

Notes
1 History of Islamic Propaganda in Nigeria (London: Waterlow & Sons Ltd,

1927?). The main body of this book contains the Reports by Tomlinson
and Lethem, to which are appended several appendices, of which
Appendix C is to Lethems Report. All references are to the Report section
unless otherwise noted. The Lethem Papers are housed in the Bodleian
Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Oxford,
and permission to quote from them is gratefully acknowledged. Lethems
obituary was published in the Times of London, August 16, 1962; see also
the letter by J. D. H. in The Times on August 20, 1962.
Archive
Rhodes House, Oxford
Sir Gordon James Lethem, correspondence and papers.
MSS Brit Emp S 276.
Report:
Report on a Journey from Bornu, Nigeria, to the Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan, Jeddah and Cairo, by Mr. G. J. Lethem, pp. 16-87, in G. J. F.
Tomlinson and G.J. Lethem, History of Islamic Propaganda in
Nigeria, Reports by and Appendices to Mr. G. L. Lethems report,
Appendix C: West Africans in Cairo: The Bornu riwak in the alAzhar University, pp. 25-41.
Lethem had visited Sudan before coming to Cairo, and had full knowledge of the Sudan Intelligence reports. The tour took place July 9-July
21, 1925, and he stayed in Cairo 9 days (note in the Lethem Papers,
and also Lethem Report, p. 87).
Note on the Mosque of Surur Agha Box 11, file 3, f.29.
Cairo Diary, Box 9, file 15, ff. 1-47.
H. R. Palmer, Report on Mahdism in Northern Provinces, enclosed
in Report by Hugh Clifford, Lethem Papers, Box 10, file 6, ff. 63-64.
Al-Azhar Library, Cairo
Nafi, Abd al-Hamid, Dhayl al-Maqrizi, MSS [#412] Abaza 6702
[Tarikh].

Alif 26 (2006)

27

Sharia Court Records

In the 1970s, these were located at the Maslahat al-Shahr al-Aqari, on
Ramses Street; they are now housed in the National Archives/Dar alWathaiq al-Qawmiyya. The court records I consulted were in several series
(listed by series name, volume, pages, and number, followed by date):
Ashadat
Al-Bab al-Ali
Ibtadaiyya shariyya
Ilamat
Al-Mahkama al-Askariyya
Tarikat.
2 Lethem, Report, 34; [Lt.] Governor of Nigeria to Lethem, 29 November
1924, Lethem Papers, 11/1, ff/20-21; for some years they had been consulting their French counterparts, who were also on the lookout for PanIslamists. E. Meret wrote the Resident of Bornu on 31 January 1916, to be
on the lookout for al-Hajj Bashir, who was coming to Kano in the party of
Gen. Largeau. Bashir had been in Mecca for 16 years, had visited Cairo
and Istanbul, and therefore was suspect, and was believed to be in touch
with the Comit Union et Progrs (Lethem Papers, Box 10, file 6, f 1-2).
3 Lethem, Gordon James, Scottish Biographies (Glasgow: E. J. Thurston,
1938) 292; G. J. Lethem, Colloquial Arabic: Shuwa Dialect of Bornu,
Nigeria and the Region of Lake Chad: Grammar and Vocabulary, with
Some Proverbs and Songs (London: Published for the government of
Nigeria by the Crown agents for the colonies, 1920)I am grateful to
Richard Johan Natvig of the University of Bergen for pointing this out;
Lethem and Tomlinson, Appendices to Mr. G.J. Lethems Report,
Sources of information, 40; Terence Walz, The Caravan Trade
between Libya and Egypt: the Role of Abd Allah al-Kahhal, AlMajalla al-tarikhiyya al-libiyya 3.1 (1981): 89-113 (in Arabic).
4 Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and
Meccah, vol. 2 (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1907) 169; John Lewis
Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 2nd ed. (London, 1822) lxiii-lix: from a
country called Tekrour, between Timbuctou and Kashna . . . Most of the
Tekayne come from Darfour; some from Bornou and the country of Wady
el-Ghazal, between Bornou and Darfour; others from Bagherme and
Borgo. Another term used for West Africans was Fellata, which alNaqar explains was a Kanuri word used by Arabic speakers in Sudan to connote West Africans (Umar al-Naqar, The Pilgrimage Tradition in West
Africa [Khartoum: Khartoum UP,1972] 3; on the Takarir in Sudan, Mark R.
Duffield, Fulani Mahdism and Revisionism in Sudan: Hijra or

28

Alif 26 (2006)

Compromise with Colonialism, eds., Yusuf Fadl Hassan and Paul

Doornboos, The Central Bilad al-Sudan [Khartoum: al-Tamaddun P, Ltd.,
1977] 283-305).
5 Al-Maqrizi, Al-Mawaiz wal-itibar bi-dhikr al-khitat wal-athar, vol. 1 (Bulaq:
Government Press, 1854) 193-94; J. C. Garcin, Un centre musulman de la
Haute Egypte medievale: Qus, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Institut Franais dArchologie
Orientale, 2005) 427-28; Khalis Takruri, a eunuch who was a commander that
died in 1497 (Ibn Iyas, Histoire des mamlouks circassiens, trans. Gaston Wiet,
vol. 2 [Cairo: Institut Franais dArchologie Orientale, 1945] 181, 251, 400);
Anbar al-Takruri (d. 1509), Commander of Ten: Histoire des mamlouks cir cassiens, vol. 2, 362; on eunuchs and other Black Africans and their charitable
gifts, C. Petry, From Slaves to Benefactors: The Habashis of Mamluk Cairo,
Sudanic Africa 5 (1994): 57-68; on the pilgrimages: Mohamed M. Amin,
Mali and Songhay Relations with Egypt in the Mamluk Period (in Arabic),
African Historical Studies 4 (1975): 273-313.
6 On knowledge of African place names, see Terence Walz, Trade between
Egypt and Bilad as-Sudan (Cairo: Institut Franais dArchologie
Orientale, 1979) 176-78. It is commonly thought that the use of Dar
Sulayh for Wadai dates from the reign of a grandson of Abd al-Karim
Sabun named Muhammad al-Sharif, nicknamed Salih, to denote his kingdom. But the usage in Cairo predates the period of his rule (thought to be
1835-1858) as I found in a court case dated 1803. He was responsible for
opening up the trade between Wadai and the Mediterranean ports in
Libya. See Gustav Nachtigal, Sahara and Sudan, trans. with introduction
and notes by Allan G. B. Fisher and Humphrey Fisher, vol. 4 (London:
C. Hurst & Co., 1971) 211.
7 Lethem, Appendix C, 25.
8 Lethem, Report, 51-52.
9 For example, Sitt Assa Bilal of Asyut, who had arrived from Darfur as a
slave in 1878, emancipated, educated at the American Girls School, and
ended her days at the head of the kitchen at the school (obituary, Egyptian
Gazette [December 9, 1939]); on Takarir in Sudan, Lethem 55-56; on
Nigerians settling in Cairo, Interview, Muaz.
10 Auguste Cherbonneau, Essai sur la littrature arabe au Soudan daprs le
Tekmilet ed-Dibadje dAhmed Baba le Tombouctien, Annales de la
socit archologique de Constantine 2 (1855): 1-42; A. D. H. Bivar and
M. Hiskett, The Arabic Literature of Nigeria to 1804: A Provisional
Account, Bull. School of Oriental and African Studies 25.1 (1962): 131;
John Hunwick, The Arabic Literary Tradition of Nigeria, Research in
African Literatures 28.3 (1997): 210-23; Stefan Reichmuth, Islamic

Alif 26 (2006)

29

Education in Sub-Saharan Africa, The History of Islam in Africa, eds.

Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels (Athens: Ohio UP, and
Oxford: James Currey, 2000) 427.
11 For the waqf of Yashbak: Muhammad Amin, Fihris wathaiq al-Qahira
hatta nihayat asr al-salatin al-mamalik (Cairo: Institut Franais
dArchologie Orientale, 1981), #199, p. 46; #499, p. 171; for distribution
of revenues to various riwaqs, including the Takarna, in 1803: see note on
Mahkama archives above: Bab al-Ali, vol. 327, p. 111 (18 Jumada I,
1218); for the Jabart riwaq funding in 1690, listing 7 waqfs: Bab al-Ali,
vol. 176, p. 15, #43; for a listing of many individual waqfs supporting alAzhar during the budgetary year 1962-3, many of which date back to earlier centuries: Ministry of Awqaf and Azhar Affairs, Cairo, Al-Azhar
tarikhuhu wa tatawwuruhu (Cairo: Al-Ittihad al-Ishtaraki al-ArabiDar
wa-Mutabaat al-Shaab, 1964) 175-85.
12 R. S. OFahey and J. L. Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan (London:
Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1974) 121; Y. Urvoy, Chroniques dAgades,
Socit des Africanistes 4 (1934): 145-77; Jacques Jomier, Un aspect de
lactivite dal-Azhar du XVIIe aux debuts du XIXe sicle: Les aqaid ou
professions de foi, Colloque International sur lhistoire du Caire (Cairo:
Ministre de la culture, 1972) 248.
13 The copy of the waqf of Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda I consulted is dated
1760: Askar, vol. 170, 166-205, #261 (18 Rabi I, 1174); see also Andr
Raymond, Les constructions de lemir Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda au
Caire, Annales Islamologiques 9 (1972): 236-51.
14 Abd al-Hamid Nafi, Dhayl al-Maqrizi, al-Azhar Library, MSS 412
Abaza no. 6702 (Tarikh), f. 40: the date of the manuscript is 1248/1832;
death of shaykh of Bornu riwaq: Askar, vol. 279, pp. 223-24, 15 Shaban,
1239; Ali Mubarak, al-Khitat al-tawfiqiyya al-jadida li-Masr al-Qahira,
New Edition, vol. 4 (Cairo: Matbaat Dar al-Kutub, 1980) 49-58.
15 Lethem, Report, 53.
16 On mats and clothing, Mustafa Bairam, Risalat al-Azhar (Cairo:
Tamaddun P, 1903-04) 61.
17 On size of libraries: Nafi, 40; on number of riwaqs: J. Heyworth-Dunne,
An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt (London:
Luzac & Co., 1938) 25: note that he does not suggest a date for the creation of the Bornu and Wadai riwaqs; on centralization of al-Azhar
libraries: Bayard Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millennium of Muslim Learning
(Washington DC: Middle East Institute, 1961) 128.
18 Funding: on the consequences of the Land Law of 1858, Dodge, AlAzhar,115; waqf of Surur Agha: Ashadat v. 65, p. 51 (7 Dhul-Hijja

30

Alif 26 (2006)

1313); waqf of Bashir Agha: Ibtadaiyya shariyya (Court Records), dated

23 Rajab, 1343; al-Hajj Tayfur Sami: mentioned in the 1962-63 budget for
al-Azhar (published in al-Azhar Tarikhuhu wa tatawuruhu); several
waqfs earmarked funds for the Takruri lodges only if all the preceding
beneficiaries and their heirs had disappeared: for examples, the waqf of
Yusuf Abdel-Fattah, Cairo chief of merchants in 1855 (Waqf vol. 7, pp.
17-26, dated 5 Dhul-Hijja, 1271), stipulates revenues to go to poor students in the riwaqs of the Takarna, Sharaqwa and al-Saayida; Shaykh
Musa Ibrahim al-Takruri (Ashadat [Court Records] vol. 269, pp. 32-33,
#126, dated February 18, 1910), which stipulated that any funds not
expended for his tomb should go to the students of Bornu at al-Azhar
(apparently they never did).
19 On the uses of the stipends: Dodge, 128; on special gifts to the African students: Cairo Intelligence Report 2/15/128, dated December 1, 1908; students living outside the riwaqs: Lethem 41; Lethem, Cairo Diary, 39;
Interview, Abu Bakr al-Hakim al-Sulayhi; for full list of interviewees, see
below; on the al-Abbasi riwaq: Dodge, 203.
20 On needs of modern-day Africans: Interview, Abdel Razzaq al-Tahir; on
nineteenth-century reforms and new requirements, Dodge, 132-44, 197200; use of tutors: Interview, Muaz Abu Bakr Warsha, al-Hajj Ibrahim
al-Sudani; situation in 1925: Lethem, Report, 52; on numbers of students
at the mosque in 1872, see Appendix 1.
21 Heyworth-Dunne, 27.
22 Heyworth-Dunne, 30; salary in 1925: Lethem, Report, 53; on early
Takruri shaykh: Al-Bab al-Ali (Court Record) vol. 315, p. 267, dated 24
Jumada II, 1208.
23 Lethem, Appendix C: 28-29.
24 Lethem Papers, Confidential Note on Mohammad Ali, 11/4, ff. 24-25;
Confidential report to the Under-Secretary of State in the Colonial Office,
November 14, 1925, Lethem Papers, Box 11, file 1, ff126-128.
25 Interviews, Muhammad Musa Abu Bakr and Muaz Abu Bakr Warsha.
26 Lethem, Appendix C, 30; interview, Muhammad Musa Abu Bakr.
27 Lethem, Appendix C, 32.
28 Lethem, Appendix C, 31-32; interviews, Muhammad Musa Abu Bakr and
Hajj Ibrahim al-Sudani.
29 Bash aghay al-haram bi-tarf al-Sitt Khadija Hanim . . . (from the waqf
document: see note 16; sources on Surur Agha and on the misappropriation of its revenues: Lethem 53; Interview, Muhammad Musa Abu Bakr;
Surur Agha is the eunuch alluded to in Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, The
Tijaniyya: a Sufi Order in the Modern World (London; NY: Oxford UP,

Alif 26 (2006)

31

1965) 158, and identified as having been in the household of a Turkish

princess al-Khaznadarahhis misinformed source is Abd al-Karim alAttar, Tarikh al-tariqa al-Tijaniyya al-musharrafa fil-bilad al-Misriyya
(Cairo, n.d.) 61-62; the Hausa in particular used a variety of woods in their
practices, many of which had magical and health-giving properties: see A.
J. N. Tremearne, Ban of the Bori: Demons and Demon Dancing in West
and North Africa (London: Heath, Cranton & Ouseley, 1914), Appendix
2: Botanical Notes, 474-77.
30 On the history of the lodge in Cairo, Interview, Shaykh Muhammad al-Hafiz
Abd al-Latif; on later visits by Nigerian personalities: Interview, Muaz.
31 Gustav Nachtigal, Sahara and Sudan, trans. Allan G. B. Fisher and
Humphrey J. Fisher, vol. 2 (London: C. Hurst and Atlantic Highlands; NJ:
Humanities P International, 1980) 233; on Baghirmi as a source of slaves,
George Michael Larue, The Frontiers of Enslavement: Baghrimi and the
Trans-Saharan Routes, Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam, ed. Paul
Lovejoy (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004) 31-54; Egyptian
Gazette (March 2, 1888); Gabriel Baer, Slavery and Its Abolition,
Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago: U of Chicago P,
1969) 181.
32 Tarikat, vol. 29, pp. 42-43, dated 3 Jumada II 1288 and pp. 91-92, dated
21 Dhul-Hijja 1288.
33 Takruris drafted into army: Amin Sami, Taqwim al-Nil, vol. 2 (Cairo:
Matbaat al-amiriyya, 1916-35) 172-74; the case of Abdallah Adam alTakruri, Bab al-Ali, vol. 327, p. 205, #466, 16 Muharram 1218.
34 Stanislaus dEscayrac de Lauture, Memoire sur le Soudan, Bull. Soc. de
gog. 4 th Ser. 10 (1855) 96-97; V. A. Malte-Brun, Notice sur Edouard
Vogel, Bull. Soc. de gog. Paris, 4 th Ser., 15 (1858) 321; Fate of Dr.
Vogel, Proceedings of the Royal Geog. Society London 2.2 (March
1858): 79-80; for the later period, Cairo Intelligence Reports 1/44/260,
D59 and D60, dated March 20, 1893.
35 Cairo Intelligence Report, no. 13 (April 1893), no. 15 (June 1893), Cairo
Intelligence News, 5 May 1902; 3 November 1909, 7 June 1910).
36 I easily found an edition in the bookshops near al-Azhar published by
Muhammad Ali Sabih & Sons in 1971, though, curiously enough, Dar alKutub was then restricting the manuscripts circulation to scholars. His
biography was written by Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, Ajaib al-athar filtarajim wal-akhbar, vol. 1 (1297 AH) 159-60. A manuscript copy in alKashinawis hand of the Bahjat al-afaq is in the Dar al-Kutub.
37 Heyworth-Dunne, 12-13; 1812: U. de Seetzen, Nouvelles recherches sur
lintrieur de lAfrique: II: Nouveaux renseignments sur le Royaume ou

32

Alif 26 (2006)

Empire de Bournou, recueillis au Caire par M. de Seetzen, Annales de

voyages 19 (1812): 165; C. Rochfort Scott, Rambles in Egypt and Candia,
vol. 1 (1837) 218-24; C. Klunzinger, Upper Egypt: Its People and Its
Products (London: Blackie & Son, 1878), wrote about numerologists:
The Moghrebins or Moors and the Fellatah of Soudan are reputed the
most learned and skilful in it (384).
38 Lethem 51.
39 Samuel M. Zwemer, Across the World of Islam (NY: Fleming H. Revell
Co., 1929) 129.
40 Lethem, Appendix C, 37-38, and Lethem, Papers, Cairo Diary, Box
9/15, f32; Interview, Muhammad Musa Abu Bakr.
41 For this information, I draw on a series of interviews in Cairo in 1971:
Rustum al-Babi al-Halabi, al-Hajj Ibrahim, Muhammad Musa Abu Bakr.
42 Lethem, Report, 51.
43 Klunzinger, 395-97 (written in 1870); Tremearne; on the Hausa and bori:
Susan OBrien, Pilgrimage, Power, and Identity: The Role of the Hajj
in the Lives of Nigerian Hausa Bori Adepts, Africa Today 46.3 (1999)
<www.iupjournals.org/africatoday/afr46-3.html>; on the Hausa women
in Cairo, Lethem 51; in North Africa (Tunis and Algiers), John
Hunwick, The Religious Practices of Black Slaves in the
Mediterranean, Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam, 49-71, and Ismael
Musah Montana, Ahmad ibn al-Qadi al-Timbuktawi on the Bori
Ceremonies of Tunis, Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam, 173-98; on the
remembrance of a famous zar specialist, interview, Muhammad Musa
Abu Bakr; on the Alexandria specialists, Interview, al-Jazairli; I am
grateful to Richard Johan Natvig of the University of Bergen for information about the term gudiya.
44 Palmer, Introduction, History of Islamic Propaganda, 16; on the watch for
a Mahdist movement, Nigerian Intelligence Reports (1929-32), Notes on
Amadu Rufai, prepared on October 11, 1929, written in Darfur; Lethem,
Report, 34; Igba R. Vishigh, History of Islam in Northwest Nigeria up to
1960, Christianity and Islam in Dialogue, Northwest Nigeria 1960-1990,
diss., U of Jos, Nigeria, 1997 <http://www.diafrica. org/nigeriaop/Vishigh
/phd3.htm>.
45 Lethem 59 and 64: I have been unable to trace further The Wasiyya of Shaykh
Ahmad: on the Muslim leaders popular among Nigerians, Lethem 64.
46 Lethem, Report, 87.
47 Lethem, Appendix C, 31-33.
48 On Kahhal: Terence Walz, Caravan Trade; Lethem 36; Cairo Diary, 6
and 44-45.

Alif 26 (2006)

33

49 Lethem Papers, Lethem to Palmer, August 4, 1925, in Lethem Box 11, file

1, ff. 74-75.
50 Zwemer, 194-95.
51 Lethem: Appendix C, 34; on the Halabis renown in Nigeria: Hunwick, The

Arabic Literary Tradition of Nigeria, 217; Interview, Rustum al-Halabi.

52 Lethem, Appendix c, 34; on al-Hajj Ali Fahmi: Palmer in the

Introduction to Tomlinson and Lethem 12.

53 Letter to Clifford: Lethem Papers, Box 11, file 1, f 58; on the new threat

from the Wafd: Nigerian Intelligence Report, Jan-March 1929, p. 23.

Interviews
Rustum al-Halabi, 1971. Interview by author, May 10, Cairo. The son of
Mustafa al-Babi Halabi, he was the grandson of the founder of firm,
Ahmad al-Babi al-Halabi (d. 1898).
(Shaykh) Abu Bakr al-Hakim al-Sulayhi. 1971. Interview by author, July 18,
21-22. Cairo. He was then the shaykh of the riwaq al-Sulayh (Chad).
Muhammad Musa Abu Bakr. 1971. Interview by author, July 11, 15. Cairo.
His father, Musa Abu Bakr Muhammad hailed from the Dus
Gawadir quarter of Kano c. 1910.
Muaz Abu Bakr Warsha. 1971. Interview by author, July 7, 13. Cairo. The
family is from Omdurman but claimed to originate in Sokoto.
Yusuf Fahmi Jazairli. 1971. Interview by author and Radames Lackany,
August 20. Alexandria. He is the author of a volume published under
the title Iskandariyyat (Alexandria: Kirasat al-Iskandariyya, 1973), a
series of biographies of Alexandrian personalities.
(Shaykh al-Hajji) Ibrahim al-Busiri Salaman al-Illori. 1971. Interview by
author, April 29. Cairo.
Abd al-Razzaq al-Tahir, 1971. Interview by author, March 8. Cairo. A
Ghanaian, whose father, al-Hajji Tahir, I had interviewed in Accra.
(Shaykh) Muhammad al-Hafiz Abd al-Latif Salim al-Tijani. 1971. Interview
by the author in Cairo at the Zawiya Surur Agha Mosque,
Mugharbalin, 15 March. He was the head of the lodge in Cairo.
(Hajj) Ibrahim al-Sudani. 1971. Interview by the author in Cairo under one of
the porticos of al-Azhar mosque, July 15.

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